‘구비문학(口碑文學)’이라는 개념과 범주의 형성 과정 탐색

Abstract

This study is intended to analyze historical formation process of the conceptualization and the categorization of ‘oral literature’. In Korea, the study and the investigation of oral transmission(for example folktale, myth, legend, folksong, proverb, riddle and so on.) has been started from colonial period as a substudy of folklore. The term ‘oral literature’ was made by researchers of Korean literature in 1960s. The ‘oral literature’ became to be a branch of Korean literature, deriving out of folklore at the time. It is a significant event in history of Korean literature research. The core theme is to cognize and to narrate tension, rivalry, interchange and contrast inherent interaction between orality and literacy. In the history of Korean literature, the relationship of orality and literacy has been interpreted towards the tendency of intensifying the idea that the culture has evolved into literary culture from oral culture, and discourse that oral language has belonged to the subjugated class and literary language has belonged to the establishment class. The term ‘oral literature’ came into light to the field of the research of korean literature in the 1960s, but was not established as a branch of korean literature until the 1970s. In those times, the researchers of korean literature intended to formulate ‘korean literature’ as a ‘national literature’ to find continuity, removing severance from the history of korean literature, made by colonial experience, and the properties of the people as the subjugated class in ‘national literature’. The formation of ‘Oral literature’ accorded with the purpose of korean literature research in 1970s. The escape from ‘Korean folklore’ meant that ‘oral literature’ was recognized as a substudy of Korean literature and that it finally got to get out of the shadow of the colonial period. Korean folklore derived from ‘Choseon folklore’, which has been deeply influenced by Japanese folklore. Korean literature was formed as a ‘national literature’, and it has symbolic meaning of breaking away from colonialism. But the term ‘oral literature’ connotes a contradiction between orality and literacy. So we need to interpret and solve the contradiction, and to trace the historical process of the formation of ‘oral literature’ in Korean literature genealogically.